Water softener

[drumin]

We are on Well water (hard water) and my wife wants to have a water softener installed. Will the salt used in a water softener be bad news for my plants?

[arnold layne]

hey drumin-
i believe the short answer to your question would be "yes".

the long answer goes something like this:
a water softener will replace calcium and other minerals with sodium.
the effect is twofold....
there will be a deficiency of certain minerals, as those have been replaced by the salts, and there will be a buildup of salts in your soil (if you're growing in soil), which will eventually be toxic to your plants. i believe that it would also raise the ph significantly.
if you do decide to use softened water, i would think you would want to flush every so often to reduce the sodium buildup.
i've read that there are some potassium based water softening systems, which would at least replace the hard water minerals with a useable componenet, but that would probably throw your feeding out of whack (unless you were mindful of this and cut back on the potassium you feed yur plants).

i would think that the safer solution would be to install a 2 or 3 stage filter (like the cheap units on ebay) before the softener, so you could pull your gardening water from that.

hope this helps.

peace-
arnold layne

[Fing_57]

potassium based water softening systems


its called Greensand

[arnold layne]

its called Greensand


thanx.

i don't know a whole lot about water softeners, as the water from my hose reads 20ppm/8.0-ish ph.
:D

peace-
arnold layne

[WilliamClarkeQuantrill]

it's called potassium chloride (http://www.uwsp.edu/cnr/gndwater/privatewells/An%20Alternative%20to%20Softening%20with%20Sodium. htm) which is also known as murate of potash.

I'm with AL, put in a spigot before the softener to draw your garden water from.



The greensand filters are for iron, manganese and hydrogen sulfide fitration, not hard water(magnesium carbonate and calcium carbonate).


:smokin:

[Chronic007]

Definiley a spigot before the softener, softened water not to good for the plants. When i had well water I invested in a home depot carried R/O system about 150 bucks and well worth it IMO made bigg differences in growing and the quality of finished product!

[reubeni]

Definiley a spigot before the softener, softened water not to good for the plants. When i had well water I invested in a home depot carried R/O system about 150 bucks and well worth it IMO made bigg differences in growing and the quality of finished product!

Yep RO! way to go.:D

[Elephunt man]

X3 :D